Month: September 2016

The Apostles’ Creed: I Believe in Jesus Humiliated

Posted on by Caleb Smith

My series on the Apostles’ Creed must now move on to perhaps what might be regarded as the central section, the section on Christ’s humiliation. This part is gold:

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.

The life of the Jesus described so well in the previous line, the Son of God and one Lord, is now described up to the point of His death. So what does the Creed teach on this?

Conceived by the Holy Spirit – Before even the article on the Holy Spirit, He is mentioned as the one by whom Jesus was conceived. This shows that Jesus’ entrance into human life is a miracle, not just any miracle but a miracle performed by the same Spirit who originally created the world. This signifies that the power which brought Jesus into the world is in fact the power of divine creation itself. Jesus is the beginning of the new creation. In Jesus God has acted to begin creation over again with His only-begotten Son in place of Adam, the old son (Luke 3:38). With Jesus the human race is to be reborn.

Born of the Virgin Mary – We also see that Jesus, though conceived by the Spirit, was born of a human woman, the Virgin Mary. Jesus was not purely an interruption and replacement for the existing humanity, but in fact He was the beginning of the new creation in the midst of the old and broken one. Through Mary Jesus was born still a part of the natural human race. If it were not for this He would be some kind of alternate kind of human unrelated to us, one who could be of no use in saving our kind. Through Mary Jesus is the kinsman-redeemer, the one who shares the actual flesh and blood of His people that He may redeem their flesh and blood. This in fact makes the Catholic notion of Mary’s immaculate conception (remember this means that she was born graciously saved from original sin) entirely unnecessary. Jesus from Mary received His original contact with human corruption and sin, and like in all of His other dealings began from that very point His work in healing and sanctifying it. In this line we fine that Jesus entered humanity even in its deadness in order to raise it to new life.

Suffered under Pontius Pilate – We see that the Creed moves immediately from His birth to His sufferings of His trial. This should not be taken as an indication that nothing in between these events mattered or that Jesus’ ministry is ultimately secondary to His death. Instead, we should recognize that Jesus’ entire life before His death was bound up with His impending death, and His death was the climax of the entire life that led to it. Thus the Creed does not simply leave out Jesus’ life, but rather makes its significance inseparable from His passion. In truth, Jesus’ death belonged to His life and His life belonged to His death.

Also important is that we find Jesus’ chief accomplishment, the defining act of which the Creed is compelled to speak, to be His suffering. Suffering is to be understood as essential to what Jesus did. This is startling given the identity the Creed assigns to Jesus. He is the quite divine Son of God. Yet how can God, the eternal Creator who stands above all puny things, suffer? Who can afflict the one who is greater than all? But there is a great mystery and glory in the statement agreed on by the early church fathers that in Christ, “the Impassible suffered.” This is also startling given that Jesus is identified as Messiah. What Jew would have believed that their Messiah would be forced to suffer at the hands of a pagan ruler? These seemingly blasphemous paradoxes are at the heart of the Gospel.

We should also note that this is the second and last time any human besides Jesus is mentioned in the Creed. There are only three humans at all in the Creed: Jesus, Mary, and Pilate. Jesus is the one affirmed as the true subject, God Himself. Mary connects Jesus with the history of humanity and of Israel. And Pilate can be seen to have two major uses. On the one hand, Pilate shows that Jesus, the Jew born of Mary, suffered under pagan rules. God’s Messiah raised up to save His people died under the same hands which they had expected Him to crush. This tells us already that Jesus was suffering as a substitute and representative for Israel, for whom this punishment was outlined in the Torah. God’s covenant with Israel dictated that if they were unfaithful, they would suffer many judgments, climaxing in destruction by pagan nations and exile. This we see that Jesus suffered for them. He suffered under a pagan ruler while cut off from the people of God, accursed on a tree outside the city. In this act Jesus was truly standing in for Israel, and as a good theology of Israel’s election would then add, through Israel He stood in for the world.

The other note about Pilate is that tying Jesus’ death to this particular ruler, Jesus’ death is set in real world history. Jesus suffered at a specific time in a specific place under specific historical and political conditions. In addition to the basic apologetic thrust (which is important; we can iInvestigate the history, for this really happened), it also testifies to how God always deals with man. He deals with us in real history, using historical events. God does not work for us in the abstract or the “spiritual” (if by that we mean non-physical) realm. Time and space and matter are not irrelevant to God’s purposes but are made the context for them by grace. God comes to us in our history to bring redemption to it, and He has done this most fully and climactically in first century Palestine with one single instance of Jewish flesh.

Was crucified – Now the mode of Jesus’ execution is specified. It is crucifixion. This reinforces what was just said regarding the judgment Jesus suffered vicariously for His people. Crucifixion is the ultimate symbol of what Israel was condemned to under the Torah. Crucifixion was a Roman device and represented pagan oppression. It took place outside the city gates, symbolically cut off from the people of Israel and the presence of God. It was associated with the statement in the Torah, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” And of course it was brutal and painful in every way. Nothing would better summarize the curses of the Torah than crucifixion, and this is what Jesus suffered as the true representative of Israel, as their Messiah.

Died – The most impossible statement in all of human history. Jesus, the only-begotten Son of the Father who has life within Himself, died. The immortal God perished as a mortal man. This is at the center of the Creed, both theologically and nearly visually. Jesus died, and on this everything else hinges. Yet the meaning of this death is fleshed out by all of the other statements in the Creed. Death appears not as the significant part in and of itself, but what matters was this particular death filled to the brim with meaning and placed in rich context. Had Jesus died by tripped into a river, none of this would matter. But this death, the one described in the four Gospels in detail, is uniquely redemptive as a one-of-a-kind sacrifice.

Was buried – Finally, the death completed, Jesus was buried. This is significant for many reasons, but l will highlight one of them. In this burial we find that there is a lapse between suffering and vindication. We know that Jesus will be raised before this little story is over. But He did have to wait in the grave, and this corresponds to an ongoing theme of Scripture. God makes promises, but His people must suffer for some time before experiencing the redemption. There is a limbo period where it seems as though God is unfaithful. Jesus by all accounts seemed to be the Messiah, so why did God leave Him in the grave? Why did God let Him die at all? This questions would have been teeming in the minds of the disciples. There seemed to be a paradox, a problem involving the faithfulness of God and His salvation. Israel spent many years in such periods, so did Jesus, and so do we. We have the promise of redemption, and in fact for us even Easter has already happened, but we still live in a limbo period in which God’s salvation is not revealed and the world keeps on going in apparent meaninglessness and death. We wait for God to deliver us. But the burial of Jesus reminds us that there must be such times, and that God will not be unfaithful but in His own time will fulfill all He has promised.

He descended into hell – This statement has been a source of much confusion and debate within the Church, especially in Protestantism. Alas, in this post I have no time or room to address it. I personally read “hell” here as meaning something akin to Sheol in the Old Testament, basically “the realm of the dead.” But I will have to wait to cover this statement in another post, one which will actually be separate from this series. In the meantime, I will simply suggest that this shows the depths to which Jesus penetrated in saving us. He experienced all the deepest pains and suffering, death and alienation included, which plague humanity so that He might redeem us. Whatever “hell” means here, Jesus submitted to it for our sake, out of love, to save us from it.

The Humility of God

Posted on by Caleb Smith

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Matthew 11:29

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who,

though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.

Philippians 2:3-8

“God is humble.” Have you ever in your life heard or thought of such a thing? Is it even true? Some people might initially balk at the suggestion, instead insisting that God’s final and ultimate purpose is glorifying Himself and that this is entirely opposite of humility. Yet it is not clear that this is Biblically accurate. For if we know anything about God, according to Scripture, we know that He is revealed most fully and perfectly in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And, as I just quoted, Jesus calls Himself “humble.” Paul uses the mind of Jesus as the prime example of humility. So there are only two possibilities: either humility is a trait of Jesus unique to His humanity, or humility is in fact a trait of God.

So was humility only a part of Jesus’ earthly life? Was it only a result of His becoming a human being? This seems questionable on multiple grounds. For one, humility is treated in Scripture as a virtue, an element of good character. Yet Jesus’ character in His earthly life was not something that came purely from His human existence, but corresponded in every way to His goodness as the eternal Son. While we can certainly acknowledge that Jesus did say and do things as a human which do not directly correspond to anything in His divine life (I doubt, for example, that using the restroom expressed His divine character, though maybe that’s a limit of my imagination), it seems difficult to suggest that any of the positive traits He applied to Himself or any of the character He expressed can divorced from who He is as God.

Another reason to be skeptical that Jesus’ humility is restricted to His humanity is that Philippians 2 treats it as underlying the Incarnation. When Paul seek to inspire us to humility here, he does not point first to how humble Jesus was on earth, as if He only became humble because He became human. Rather, he starts by pointing out that Jesus’ act of becoming incarnate, His very choice to become human, was already a humble act. The choice to become human is not itself a choice made by Jesus in His human nature, since He did not have one until He chose to have one! Yet He already expressed humility by choosing to become a human being. Therefore humility characterizes Jesus even in eternity as the pure God, the one is entirely and completely the image of the God the Father Almighty and the exact expression of His nature. Since there is no God behind the back of Jesus, we know that God is humble.

This brings us, then, to a couple of questions. The first is one which may be percolating in some minds right now is simply how it can be that God is humble if He in Scripture often seeks to glorify Himself. Many in fact argue that God’s first and most fundamental purpose in absolutely all things is to glorify Himself. While I tend to think this is a bit reductionistic and goes beyond what Scripture actually teaches, it certainly can’t be denied that God in Scripture often does seem to act for His own glory. So how can God seek His own glory and be humble (or love, for that matter, cf. 1 Cor. 13:4-5)? To understand this, I believe we need to see the Trinitarian shape of God’s glory and love. Love does not seek its own, to be sure, but it does always seek its beloved’s. And no one loves the Son more than the Father, or the Father more than the Son. There is no love greater than the love of God in the Holy Spirit. We understand from Scripture that the Son glorifies the Father, the Father glorifies the Son (John 17:1-5), and the Holy Spirit does not speak of Himself but of the Father through and in the Son (John 15:26).

Even this, though, does not fully seem to account for the self-glorification of God. After all, even though God exists in three persons, there is also a sense in which it is right to treat Him as a single, undivided Subject and Actor. So it may still be worth asking just how a humble God glorifies Himself from the perspective even of His oneness. To this end I might suggest an analogy. Imagine a humble, soft-spoken but absolutely excellent doctor. He feels little impulse to brag about his impressive skill or medical successes, even though he certainly would be speaking pure truth if he did. Yet one day he finds a man in a severe medical emergency on the side of the road. The man is proud, confused, and skeptical of the doctor, willing to simply risk it on his own rather than submit to the instructions the doctor provides. So the doctor begins explaining and demonstrating his medical expertise and skill with a flurry of technical terms, deft use of his resources, and stories of great feats he has accomplished in the operating room. He exalts himself and humbles the man, not for any selfish or egotistical purpose but precisely because he is the man’s only hope for life. Without him the man will die, and he must make the man understand.

While I doubt this is a flawless analogy and assume someone could find a fault or two, I think it has some merit. God doesn’t just glorify Himself because He craves glory from tiny creatures or because He desperately needs the adulation like some kind of megalomaniac, but rather spreads His glory across the world so that all people will see Him and find eternal life in communion with Him. For Psalm 22:26-27 declare, “Those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever! All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him,” and John 17:3 adds, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

With all this in mind we can see no real contradiction between God’s self-glorification and His essential humility. So we can return to the simple words of Christ and accept them as God’s own self-revelation: “I am humble in heart.” God is not an egomaniac. He is not a narcissist. He is not an arrogant tyrant running around to make more of Himself than He needs to. He is glorious, but without pretense or a need to exalt in His glory over us. Just as Karl Barth once said, “God does not need to make any fuss about his glory: God is glorious. He simply needs to show Himself as He is, He simply needs to reveal Himself. That is what He does in man.” Indeed, He expresses His glory by becoming one of us, and ultimately in humbling Himself all the way to the Cross to give us life. God is most glorified on Calvary, precisely where He is most humble, even humiliated. This is our God, whose “I AM WHO I WILL BE” climaxes in His most despised and lowly moment in giving His own self for us. This is the God who is love, the God who is Jesus Christ. And rather than actually give you the takeaways, I think they can speak for themselves. I instead suggest that you simply meditate and pray. The glory of this humble, self-giving God should tell you all you need to know.

History, Relevance, the Bible, and Reader’s Narcissism

Posted on by Caleb Smith

Having read much from N. T. Wright, the NIV Application Commentary set, and many other interesting resources in recent years, I’ve frequently been struck by the wide gap between what Biblical scholars present as the meaning of most texts, and what I’ve heard or been taught in sermons, Sunday school, and Bible studies. Sometimes it is merely a matter of a basic point being made in a certain context, and then a quick and easy leap of application is necessary to translate to the meaning I’ve learned. Other times, there seems to be a world of a difference between the two.

Most of the time, I am more or less convinced by the Biblical scholars (though not always!). I am inclined, for example, to take many of Jesus’ warnings of destruction and hellfire primarily as a prophetic announcement of judgment on Jerusalem, instead of individual postmortem torment, and to read most of His parables as stories about Israel. Yet much of this would be, if not anathema, at least suspect within evangelical churches. If you propose taking almost any Biblical text in a way which locates the primary meaning in a context or narrative which does not automatically include us, the modern readers, you are generally to be ignored and possibly rebuked (unless, of course, head coverings or Torah is involved). Why is this?

I propose the primary problem is the reader’s narcissism inherent in the popular slogan relevance. We generally want the Bible read in a way that directly addresses our wants, concerns, needs, and questions. This is especially the case within evangelicalism where we try so hard to help people live out their faith, and to attract the world to our message. However good such intentions may be, building relevance into the end-all be-all of Biblical interpretation and forcing the text to fulfill that goal does massive violence to Scripture as it has been given to us. It ultimately reflects an attitude in the reader of, “If it’s not about me, I don’t want to hear it.” So real scholarship, especially with a strong historical and contextual focus, is discouraged. This is, I submit, simply wrong, and should be repented of if we want to honor God’s word as He has provided it.

This even applies to the more high-minded theological readers who may think themselves immune to this tendency. Yet they can fall just as easily into the trap of desperately seeking theological relevance, expecting to find certain sets of questions and answers about theological concerns which they have but which the original authors and audiences may not have shared. This is no more or less legitimate than the fixation on practical relevance as the true hermenuetic.

Of course, the impulse for relevance is not altogether misguided. For “all Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching the truth, rebuking error, correcting faults, and giving instruction for right living, so that the person who serves God may be fully qualified and equipped to do every kind of good deed” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). If indeed this is the case, we should be able to find meaning for us in every text in Scripture. All Scripture is truly for us, but we can’t pretend that it is in the same way all to us. What we need is a robust way of letting Scripture be what it originally is while still appropriating the major messages for modern use. How should we do this?

Personally, I think a good solution would be a three stage process of reading Biblical texts. First, we examine the original context and meaning without any reservations, or any attempt to pre-shape it towards our relevance, without asking any questions of practice or theology which are not clearly included or implied in text or its surroundings. Second, we step back and consider the larger theological questions, address any concerns in relation to other Scripture, and in particular trace all themes to their center in Jesus Christ Himself, for He said, “these very Scriptures speak about me!” (John 5:39). Finally, with the original context and the theo/Christological weight in mind, we can make the final step into applying these themes for our life, worship, and service today. Usually, in my experience, once the hard work has been done on the first two steps, the third part arises easily and naturally.

This solution itself is not enough, though. While I think this method is good, to actually reform evangelicalism in this issue we have actually get this approach across to the average churchgoer. The vital next step would be training Christians and congregations precisely not to expect to find a Scripture’s original meaning and relevance as the same thing. Instead, it needs to be emphasized that Scripture is robustly historical, being God’s word first to the original audience, and only through the work of the Spirit in the present becomes for us as well. There is an actual gap between original meaning and relevance which must be filled with solid theology and a vision of Jesus Christ as the telos of all the Bible. This is what evangelicalism needs to learn as a whole, not just in the academic world, who mostly understands this (ish), but also in the pews.

Finally, at the heart level we must fight pride and self-centeredness. We cannot let relevance and our wish to “get something” out of the Bible interfere with addressing what God has actually spoken. In humility, we have to all remember that the God revealed in Jesus Christ is larger than us, and altogether not obligated to address every generation and people equally. This is proved by His coming in the flesh, which happened not in every generation among every people, but instead was restricted by grace to the nation of Israel 2000 years ago. If we can cope with God’s greatest self-revelation, His own Son, being historically separated from us, then surely we can understand that the witnessing texts of Scripture can likewise be so without robbing us.

What God Has Done, Not What He “Would” Do

Posted on by Caleb Smith

“God wouldn’t…” This unfortunate phrase appears fairly often in theological debate. Along with this one come on occasion “God couldn’t” or, more rarely, “God shouldn’t.” Yet to me reasoning which starts in this way seems somewhat misguided at best and dangerous at worst. To explain why, I shall first provide some examples of what I dislike.

  • A theistic evolutionist might say, “God wouldn’t create the natural world in a God-of-the-gaps manner.”
  • A young earth creationist might say, “God wouldn’t create life by such a violent and inefficient process as evolution.”
  • A Calvinist might say, “God wouldn’t waste any of Jesus’ blood dying for those who won’t be saved.”
  • An Arminian might say, “God couldn’t save everyone without violating their free will.”
  • A theological progressive might say, “God wouldn’t oppose people of any sex who love each other getting married.”
  • A theological conservative might say, “God wouldn’t [maybe couldn’t] provide us with a Bible anything less than 100% inerrant.”
  • A universalist might say, “God couldn’t send Jesus to die for everyone but everyone not be saved.”
  • An exclusivist might say, “God wouldn’t save those who reject His Son.”

What do these all have in common? They all seem entitled to be overly presumptuous in discussing God. I take it as an absolute axiom that God is utterly, sovereignly free. God is under no obligations outside of Himself, and is not bound to any structures, logics, or rules beyond those to which He freely chooses to bind Himself. If this is the case to, in my opinion, any meaningful extent at all, then what use is a “wouldn’t” or a “couldn’t?”

The fundamental problem with trying to reason out such controls over God’s activity is that of the infinite qualitative distinction between God and humanity. God is above; we are below. God is infinite; we are finite. God created and transcends the natural order; we were created and are radically contingent within the natural order. All of this adds us to that God’s famous declaration in Isaiah: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways.”

Given Jesus’ own life (among other realities), this radical disjunction between human expectations and divine actions should be entirely unsurprising. How hard-pressed would one be to imagine a Jew before Christ saying, “God would never become a man?” Or perhaps one did expect that God would come in a human form or something, but might have thought, “When God comes, He will come in glory and power, certainly not in a lowly manger.” Indeed, when Jerusalem was abuzz with the hope that Jesus would take up the Messianic role and set Himself up as God’s king against Rome, did He not instead take the humble role of the suffering servant? Who before this happened would have said anything but, “God could not die!”

The pattern is clear. God has revealed that His normal practice is overturning human expectations, shattering our ideas of what He could or would do. His ways have appeared startling and paradoxical throughout His whole history of dealings with mankind, Israel, His own Son, and the Church. With such a free, sovereign, and surprising God, how could we ever presume to figure out His truths by way of reasoning what He could or would do? This would be akin to predicting what a cunning, master chess player would do when you yourself barely even know the rules of the game.

Instead, I believe we should restrict ourselves to the question of only what God has done, or promised to do. An examples, what if we reframed the earlier example debates this way exclusively?

  • Did God create life by evolutionary, biological means, or by immediate miracle?
  • Has God provided His Son as atonement for all people, or only some?
  • Has God said that homosexuality is sinful, or has He left this open?
  • Did God inspire Scripture in an inerrant way, or in another way?
  • Has God said He will save all or some, and if some who has God said He will save?

None of the answers to these questions are important to this present post (and I can tell you now that you will not be able to use this list to figure out my stances on anything you do not already know). What matters is cutting away the “would” and “could” to focus on what God has actually done. Trying to work the other way, making the arguments I sampled at the beginning of this post, works as an effective red herring, taking our attention away from reality where God has truly done this or that, and instead pulling us into a vain world of hypotheticals and insolent speculation on the divine purposes. If we are to let God simply be God, and do as He wishes, then we should make a rule to assess His deeds a posteriori, not a priori.

On the other hand, I am not issuing a blanket condemnation on all attempts to reason about less clear areas of God’s activity from more clear ones. Obviously that is necessary in some way and to some degree. For example, if someone was arguing that God lied, we would be perfectly justified in responding “it is impossible for God to lie” (Heb. 6:18). Yet if we are to reason in this way, we must do so only on the foundations of what God has already clearly done and said, not inferences from the abstract, provisional, philosophical, and analogical side in our notions of who/what God is. On this latter ground there is simply far too much wiggle room, too many chances to go down a mental wrong turn without enough light to ever tell. Who is, after all, qualified to understand God’s ways anywhere but within the parameters set by God’s ways?

On this note, I shall end with this simply inexhaustible quote from Paul:

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and untraceable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has ever first given to Him, and has to be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.

Romans 11:33-36

Holy Ha Ha Ha

Posted on by Caleb Smith

What do churches and laser guns have in common? Pew.

I accepted Jesus as my savior, but He keeps using ‘Save As…’ and now there are more than 87 of me.

A man walks into a Presbyterian church during worship and they’re singing “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus.” (That’s it. That’s the joke.)

What do Calvinists sing when they give the invitation? “Que, Sera, Sera…”

If God is watching us, the least we can do is be entertaining.

Why wasn’t Jesus born in the USA? Because God couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

What do they call pastors in Germany? German Shepherds.

How do groups of angels greet each other? Halo, halo, halo.

Who was the smartest man in the Bible? Abraham. He knew a Lot.

Who was the fastest runner in the race? Adam, because he was first in the human race.

Who was the greatest comedian in the Bible? Samson, because he brought the house down.

Who was the greatest female financier in the Bible? Pharaoh’s daughter. She went down to the Nile and drew out a prophet.

Pickup lines:

Now I know why Solomon had 700 wives… Because he never met you.

Is it hot in here or is that just the Holy Spirit burning inside of you?

So last night I was reading in the book of Numbers, and I realized… I don’t have yours!

I didn’t believe in predestination until I met you tonight.

My spiritual gift is my good looks… It lifts people’s spirits.

Is this the transfiguration? Because you are glowing.

I used to believe in natural theology, but since I met you I’ve converted to divine revelation.

I believe one of my ribs belongs to you.

Is it a sin that you stole my heart?

Is your name Faith? Cause you’re the substance of things I’ve hoped for.

You make the Queen of Sheba look like a hobo.

Did you say your name was Esther? Oh, I guess I just thought you were chosen for such a time as this.

You and me, we’re like loaves and fishes. We just might be a miracle together.

I know you’ve already said no once, but call me Joshua because I’m going to break down your walls.

You are so unblemished that I would sacrifice you.

Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from Mount Gilead.

How many times do I have to walk around you to make you fall for me?

I’d marry Leah if it meant I’d also get to marry you.

Apostles’ Creed: I Believe in Jesus Christ

Posted on by Caleb Smith

Moving on in my series on the Apostles’ Creed, we come to the second article, about the Lord Jesus Christ. I will split the second on Christ into three parts to give every statement its due. The first part:

I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord

So can we learn anything from these simple statements? As Paul might say, much in every way!

I believe in Jesus – This should surprise us, but we are quite used to it by now. Yet, immediately after declaring belief in God the Father, the Creed moves to affirming belief in someone named Jesus, a human name. Here a human being is given a priority of belief with God Himself. And unless we are to violate the Jewish creed from wich Christianity was born, that God is one and alone is to be worshipped and trusted for all things, then we must realize that even by putting Jesus here it implies that this man, Jesus, is to be included in the worship of God Almighty. Jesus must be God, in at least some way, shape, or form.

Christ – “Christ” means “anointed,” and specifically translates in Greek the Hebrew “Messiah.” Jesus is here identified as the Messiah, the anointed king God promised to Israel from the line of David. This means that Jesus is, for one, irreducibly Jewish. He is a man of Israel, indeed Himself the true Israel in whom Israel’s destiny always was determined. He cannot be separated from these roots. Everything this article will say is said about a Jew specifically. And this Jew is the true Jew, the one man for whom Israel existed from the beginning, who fulfilled Israel’s destiny in His own life. This part of the Creed announces that the God whom we worship in worshipping Jesus is no other than the God of Israel, and thus the story of His relationship with Israel in the Old Testament is inseparable from who He is for us in Jesus and how we are supposed to understand Him. This undercuts all efforts to suggest that maybe we don’t really need the Old Testament or that Jesus and God of Israel can be set against each other in any way. He is Yahweh’s anointed.

His only Son – There is a dual significance to this phrase. On the one hand, “son of God” originated as a description of Israel (Exod. 4:22, Hos. 11:1) and Israel’s king (Ps. 2:7), and this is essential to the Messianic meaning of the first part of this line. Israel became a rebellious son before God, but Jesus fulfilled their calling as the faithful Son, the true Israelite. On the other hand, in the New Testament is has become clear that the Sonship of Jesus is something greater and deeper than the sonship of Israel. Jesus is a unique Son, the Only-Begotten of the Father. He is homoousios, of one being or nature, with His Father. The Father and the Son are one and the same being. Jesus is the exact expression of the nature of God by virtue of being the Son who bears in every way His Father’s likeness and image. When we see Jesus, we see the Father. There is no God behind the back of Jesus Christ. Everything Jesus does and says is the very act and word of God Himself.

Our Lord – This one title could perhaps be called the Gospel itself. To call Jesus “Lord” is to blaspheme all rivals. This man rules the world and no one else. All other authorities exist only because He as their Lord allows them to do so. In the end they are accountable to Him, as are all men. The claim of Jesus’ Lordship has unique meaning both in its Jewish and Gentile origins. On the Jewish side, to claim the title of Lord is necessarily put one in a special relationship with God, as God alone has any true authority. If anyone is to be Lord, it must be by God’s designation. Yet in Scripture this was taken even further. The word “Lord” was used in the Old Testament to translate Yahweh, the covenant name of God, and on more than one occasion Old Testament verses which orignally referred to God as Lord are now referred to Jesus. Jesus is Lord means not only that He is the ruler and king, but that He is the God over all rulers and kings, the one God of Israel who rules the whole earth. On the Gentile side, the title “lord” was chiefly for Caesar. He considered and even worshipped as the lord of the world. To call anyone else “lord” was a challenge to him, and this was especially so for the early Christians. Unlike all others, no Caesar could force the Christians to bow to him as lord, for his only power was the tyrant’s power, death, a power to which the Christians refused to yield. Even today, Jesus remains this Lord. He stands over and against all human powers and authorities, whether American or Russian or Iranian or Chinese. They are all subject to Him and will all give an account to Him, and none of them should be able to control us (*cough* for example, by forcing us to endorse people like Trump or Hillary *cough*) when we recognize His absolute Lordship.

Romans 9 in 500 Words or Less

Posted on by Caleb Smith

Romans 9 is an interesting and often difficult passage. I’m going to very briefly sketch the way I am inclined to read it, particularly to note the way I don’t think it supports the Calvinistic doctrine of unconditional election, but rather undermines it.

Contextual setup: Paul has been defending his Gospel of justification by the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah and our union with Him instead of justification by observing the Torah. This naturally leads to the question: what has happened to the Jews who have rejected Jesus? They seem cut off from the promise. What does this mean for God and His faithfulness to the covenant?

First, Paul explains that he really does care. He loves his people, and he wants them to be saved. They’ve gone through so much with God already. But that’s just it. God hasn’t been unfaithful. God has always worked this way, limiting and redrawing the limits of the people of God by His sovereign choice. It began with Abraham, but being a descendant of Abraham was not enough to inherit the promise later, when God chose to narrow election to Isaac’s line. Was this because Isaac was more worthy than Ishmael? No, for in the next generation God narrowed election through Jacob rather than Esau before either had been born.

Did this make God unjust? Certainly Paul knew his audience would agree God had the right to do this. He has mercy as He wills, and sometimes He actually hardens people in order to accomplish His purposes in election. When He chose Moses and Israel under his leadership to finally come out as His people, He hardened the (already wicked) Pharaoh so that His salvation for Israel might be all the more fully displayed, and indeed that His name would reach the ends of the earth. (Paul gives no indiciation here of a reprobation to damnation for Pharaoh. All that has been mentioned appears to be a particular act at a redemptive-historical moment for Pharaoh to rebel.)

This is entirely justified. God is allowed to redraw  election and harden its enemies whenever and however He pleases, despite man’s objections. He can freely form and reform Israel as a potter does clay and judge the vessels which are cut off by this reshaping. Therefore now Israel is shaped around, her election narrowed to, Christ rather than merely Abraham and circumcision or Moses and the Torah. There is no injustice in this, even if a great deal of clay is now set aside for damnation.

But ironically, Paul points out that this narrowing also expands election. By making Christ the new head of Israel’s election (as God did before with Isaac and Jacob) and hardening many of the Jews to reject Him, the door has swung wide open for Gentiles to inherit the promise and join the people of God. Now even the Gentiles can enter the chosen people through union with Christ by faith, the barriers of the Torah and Abrahamic descent overcome.